Scandalous beauty
The £1.1m Avon Carrow hunting lodge is the picture of elegance but, as Gary Parkinson discovers, it’s no stranger to controversy
There are certain tropes of Englishness that are so deeply embedded as to be timeless. Tea. Country houses. Queuing. Parliamentary scandals.
This week’s palpitation-producing property may well combine all four of the above. The idea of taking high tea at a hunting lodge will have buyers forming an orderly line, especially given its controversial history – with not just one but two high-society scandals, the more famous of which has now become a byword for political sleaze: Profumo.
Avon Carrow, just off the M40 near Banbury in Warwickshire, was built in 1896 as a hunting lodge by Captain Cecil Boyle, a typically thrusting Victorian who played first-class cricket for Oxford University and rugby union for England before dying in the Second Boer War, to which he’d taken 30 of his own horses. As you do.
After World War One it was bought by Major Frederick Bartholomew Stapleton-Bretherton, who tenanted it to Captain Owen Peel and his wife, Violet. This exciting duo achieved fame in 1922 when accused of attempting to defraud bookmakers by forging racing telegrams; she was acquitted but he was sentenced to a year in prison.
Four years later, a new family bought the lodge. Alberto Pier Antony Profumo was a barrister and the 4th Baron Profumo: the title, like the surname, originated in the former Kingdom of Sardinia. His son John became an MP at 25, and by the age of 45 was Secretary of State for War. That became a problem after an extramarital liaison with a teenage model called Christine Keeler, who had also been on intimate terms with a high-ranking Soviet military attaché: somewhat awkward for Profumo, at the height of the Cold War.
Initially denying impropriety, Profumo eventually resigned; the man who introduced him to Keeler was arrested and took a fatal overdose; Keeler was imprisoned for perjury; Prime Minister Harold Macmillan soon resigned due to ill health, and the Conservatives lost the next election. As if that wasn’t enough blowback, the story later became a (short-lived) Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
Four years before becoming Grade II-listed in 1987, grand old Avon Carrow was divided into flats, and the four-bed central section known as the Tower – clearly the most desirable slice – is now available for offers over £1.1m.
The entrance sets the tone: a huge oak double door lets on, via a 14ft x 9ft 8in hallway tiled in fleur-de-lis mosaic, to a double-height panelled drawing room measuring 28ft 4in x 18ft 9in. While the lead-lined windows look over the classy grounds and rolling Warwickshire hills, there’s another view closer at hand: via a circular stone staircase is a balcony, formerly used to oversee and select horses passing through the arch, and now used for the difficult decisions of a more modern age – it’s currently a wine store.
Also overlooking the drawing room is an 18ft 10in x 11ft 6in dining gallery, accessed by a sweeping staircase and leading to a kitchen with Tom Howley units and marble work surfaces. On the second floor, and accessed by yet another staircase, there are two bedrooms separated by a bathroom.
Up another stone spiral staircase is the third floor, with two more beds and a bath, and above that is a roof terrace from which the views stretch as far as the historic battleground of Edgehill and the Cotswolds beyond.
Throughout the 2,907 sq ft property, the fittings and finishes are as exquisite as you’d imagine, drawing from several eras from Roman-goddess stained glass to William Morris printed curtains and Arts and Crafts windows. And what could be more English than to take inspiration from a wide range of inputs, before quietly drawing the curtains and settling down to whatever the evening brings?
• 2 Avon Carrow, £1.1m, savills.co.uk
Originally published in Metro, 30 Nov 2021
